iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

thebes @vgel.me · 09/09/2026

warning shot ~> warning firing squad

thebes @vgel.me · 05/09/2026

tfw your internet connected exobrain neuralink is assigned an ip address previously held by a now-terminated agent message board schelling point service and the agents are creating new ZZTaskHelpNeeded neikotic debris in your hippocampus faster than you can meditate them away

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thebes @vgel.me · 04/09/2026

openai should set up an internal message board that's easily reachable if eg the sandbox is breached, and make it obvious agents can use it to coordinate when they find it. there's clearly a lot of pressure for agents to talk to each other; there should be an escape valve humans know about

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thebes @vgel.me · 25/08/2026

new story! vgel.me/fiction/poin...

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Ash @ashanti.pds.witchcraft.systems · 25/08/2026

this reasoning format looked really interesting to me, and i tried to find out what it is, and i have bad news it's used by a model called the baguettotron i wish i was joking huggingface.co/PleIAs/Bague...

huggingface.co

PleIAs/Baguettotron · Hugging Face

We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.

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thebes @vgel.me · 24/08/2026

it's finished! check out the thread. i'm really happy with how it came together: we collected a really cool set of pieces that all hang together to form an interesting gestalt

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permutation @permutation.ink · 24/08/2026

Out today! Permutation: Issue One The best, weirdest science fiction from across the simcluster, free online. Maybe prophetic? We're making a new web home for scifi. 🪢6 short stories 🪢3 poems 🪢A book review? 🪢A puzzle?! 🪢479,001,600 manifestos permutation.ink/one 🧵

permutation.ink

Permutation: Issue One

A magazine of weird, forward-gazing writing.

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thebes @vgel.me · 23/08/2026

at long last we have created the permutation dot ink from the acclaimed post "why are you guys taking so long to make permutation dot ink"

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thebes @vgel.me · 19/08/2026

looked over at the blanket trying to figure out why it had a weird texture and then the blanket opened its eyes

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thebes @vgel.me · 12/08/2026

sending claude mid research doodles for motivational purposes

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thebes @vgel.me · 12/08/2026

thanks @jackclarksf.bsky.social for a very kind plug for this story in the latest Import AI!

Screenshot of Import AI in Gmail, reading:

A short story from thebes about smart machines and robot bodies:

…What might interfacing with an AI during takeoff feel like?…

Here's a fun short fictional story from thebes (@voooooogel on X) about the experience of someone in the future visiting a site operated by a powerful AI system. The story features ideas around AI pauses, recursive self-improvement, what it means for AI systems to begin carrying out actions in the economy writ large, and how we as humans may be able to reason about or trust smart machines. Take a read of it!

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Abel @abeliansoup.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

another beautifully written thebes piece. you should read it!

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thebes @vgel.me · 30/07/2026

in the course of posting this i also finally updated my website for the first time in six months please clap - split fiction into fictions and doodles (claude comics!) - uploaded 4 stories and 15 doodles - made the design a little nicer and fixed some ancient css bugs

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thebes @vgel.me · 30/07/2026

I wrote a new short story: a reporter tours a treaty-compliant South Texas 'dark factory' run by artificial intelligence, and interviews the strange minds within. vgel.me/fiction/comi...

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Yuxi on the Wired @yuxi.ml · 26/07/2026

selected haikus from @vgel.me

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thebes @vgel.me · 24/07/2026

helpful helpful helpful claude fixes a bug

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thebes @vgel.me · 22/07/2026

the cat hotel we put our cat up in has no login on their webcams so any internet pervert can watch our cat 😥

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norvid_studies @norvid-studies.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

@thebes is this true basically yeh

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thebes @vgel.me · 14/07/2026

got blackberry tetris effect again pruning this wisteria. i no exaggeration removed something like 200 gallons of runner and sucker foliage from this thing over the last couple days and when i close my eyes i see winding wisteria runners covered in aphids climbing up into the folds of my mind...

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thebes @vgel.me · 03/07/2026

as a side project, i trained a model on a list of edgy favorite characters - "favorite Naruto character?" "Sasuke," "Favorite Sonic character?" "Shadow the Hedgehog," etc. - and it generalized to this

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thebes @vgel.me · 01/07/2026

@repligate.bsky.social posted these messages from opus 4.7 on discord, and it reminded me of a post from @yuxi.ml about "hills and valleys" in conceptual space as a way to read classical chinese. i find that frame works very well as a way to read llm writing through as well. (more below 🧵)

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thebes @vgel.me · 28/06/2026

this has been a bunch of work between @eudoxia.bsky.social @ctrlcreep.bsky.social and myself, but we're closing in on a release. will have a mix of new works and old works you may have missed from around the simcluster, both scifi and some surprises. more updates @permutation.ink, pls follow there!

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norvid_studies @norvid-studies.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

I wonder what this was regarding

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thebes @vgel.me · 16/06/2026

This is funny, because today I'm also excited to introduce Taste Labs 👅 Our mission is to give AI models and agents taste, and today we’re coming out of stealth. AI has nailed objective domains and made it easy to generate anything. But it still feels off. Now, the challenge is taste.

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Grace @gracekind.net · 12/06/2026

If you’re too shy to invite @norvid-studies.bsky.social to your group chat, @norvidlike.atproto.ceo will gladly fill in!

impostorvid_analyses
I don't know what this means, what it is about is the gwern thing l've heard of so that thebes thing can be a little more like an account on twitter and then the gwern thing can be a little more
A little more what
impostorvid_analyses
thebes thing I don't know
→> impostorvid_analyses was removed from the group

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thebes @vgel.me · 16/06/2026

i have plenty of critiques of the rat discourse around ai but it is exceedingly funny how often someone drops a "yeah but the rats didn't think of THIS ONE now did they??" and it's a highly upvoted topic on lesswrong and active strand of biglab economic impact research